Nikki O’Neill

Nikki O’Neill, an R&B/Americana singer-songwriter and guitarist based in Chicago, is releasing her third solo album, Stories I Only Tell My Friends. It’s being issued on Blackbird Record Label on March 14, 2025 on 12” LP vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming. Featuring eleven songs written by O’Neill, the album is co-produced by her and Rich Lackowski, and it was recorded mostly live with her 5-piece band by John Abbey at Kingsize Sound Labs in Chicago. The album’s making was largely supported by the Illinois Arts Council, who chose O’Neill as one of their Creative Catalyst Grant recipients for 2025.

Deeply in love with classic soul, rhythm & blues and gospel from an early age, O’Neill counts Pops Staples, Prince, and Teenie Hodges as her guitar heroes, but it’s songwriting that she sees as her main love. Music journalists have called her “an expressive, nuanced singer and excellent guitarist” who makes albums with songs that demonstrate “a remarkable sense of melody.”

Written in 2023-2024, three years after O’Neill relocated to Chicago from Los Angeles, some of the songs on Stories I Only Tell My Friends revolve around exclusion, uprooting and her personal experiences with migration, while others describe the struggles of staying creative and maintaining a quiet sense of wonder in a fast-paced information-driven society. There are also songs that are pure celebrations of love. “The album seems to move from musically-driven to more lyrically-driven storytelling songs, which wasn’t premeditated,” O’Neill says.

The soul-inspired Americana sound that permeates Stories I Only Tell My Friends is very much a joint creation of O’Neill and the members of her band: Rich Lackowski (drums, percussion, harmony vocals), Chris Corsale (most lead guitars, harmony vocals) and Teddy Myers (organ, piano, Wurlitzer and Rhodes), along with John Abbey and Chris Stanford on bass. O’Neill played rhythm guitar, all acoustic guitars, the solos on “Square One” and “I Wish the Sun Could Shine on Me,” plus the twin guitar solo on “I Just Knew” (together with Corsale).

“I brought my songs to the guys as rough recordings, we then arranged them together and everyone crafted their own parts,” O’Neill says. “Chris (Corsale) is a true soul music fan, and it’s not easy to find guitarists who are. He’s built his song arranging chops on cats like Prince, Curtis Mayfield and Tony Maiden, and he also contributes great harmony vocal ideas. Teddy comes up with great keyboard hooks and colorful ways to set moods and build energy in a song, while Rich creates the tastiest drum fills and dynamic transitions, and really makes an effort to get the feel right.” She continues: “Initially, I was scared to record a new album after relocating to Chicago, since everyone involved in the project would be new people except Rich. As a band, we’d performed shows with my previous material, but we hadn’t worked on any new songs yet. But there was such an immediate communal spark once we started, and the guys put their hearts into these songs. A lot of enthusiasm was felt at the studio sessions, and John was an awesome recording engineer who brought out the best in us. He also mixed the majority of the record, and helped us out by contributing great bass parts.”

Stories I Only Tell My Friends features three singles: the upbeat and soul-twangy opener “Drive,” the happy breakup ballad “Live Like You’ve Just Begun” (with wah guitar hooks and glockenspiel to pull at your heartstrings), and O’Neill’s migration story as told in the final track, the acoustic “Newcomer Blues” (what you’re hearing is her first take.)

This interweaving of Soul, Americana, Rock, Gospel and Blues is an integral part of O’Neill’s sound, and likely due to her upbringing. “I was born in L.A., but grew up mostly in Stockholm, Sweden with a Russian grandmother and Polish mother,” she says. “Both of them, and also my father, grew up with war and had a history of constantly moving from one country and one apartment to another. My mom was young when she had me, and music seemed to be her source of joy. She loved listening to all kinds of artists, from Al Green to Santana, Dinah Washington, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon, and the Traveling Wilbury’s. I soaked it all up like a sponge. I started making up songs when I was twelve, and first picked up a guitar when I was 16. I loved going to record stores, and when Prince’s Purple Rain album came out, I bought it immediately and listened to it religiously. Then a friend and drummer in my first band introduced me to Sly Stone. The way Prince and Sly fused soul and rock, and were leaders of multi-racial bands with male and female musicians was tremendously influential.”

O’Neill moved from Stockholm to New York City where she mostly played guitar in other bands. She relocated to Los Angeles after meeting Rich Lackowski at a music trade show. O’Neill became a solo artist, and the couple (now married) eventually became members of L.A.’s small, but supportive Americana artist community. After self-releasing her 2017 solo EP, Love Will Lead You Home (with songs co-written by lyricist Paul Menser), she regularly performed around L.A. with Lackowski in their 4-piece band, and was signed to Blackbird Record Label in August, 2020. In October that same year, she released World is Waiting, her second solo album and label debut. With touring opportunities erased by the pandemic and California becoming unaffordable, they packed up their instruments into her little red Honda Fit and drove to Lackowski’s hometown of Chicago. “It took me a while to get rooted in Chicago, meet musicians and start writing again, but I also didn’t want my songs to sound like leftovers from the last album,” O’Neill says. “I wanted to find out how Chicago would inspire me.”

Stories I Only Tell My Friends is eloquent testimony to the inspiration she found.